Stuart Lyle Something clearly has changed. It has been twenty-five years since Ross Perot’s insurgent presidential campaign came crashing down to earth. You could say it is unfair to compare Perot’s candidacy to Trump’s. After all, unlike Trump, Perot really had been in charge of some successful corporations, not merely real-estate Ponzi schemes. You may…
b. traven Merriam-Webster definition. PEEVED: irritated, exasperated, nettled, provoked, riled, peeved means to excite a feeling of anger or annoyance. irritate implies an often gradual arousing of angry feelings that may range from mere impatience to rage (constant nagging that irritated me greatly). exasperate suggests galling annoyance and the arousing of extreme impatience. My pet…
Don Rose Intro by b. traven This is what contributor, Don Rose, a retired Chicago political consultant has to say about the convoluted reasoning behind the selection of Merrick Garland as Obama’s nominee for the Supreme court. Other theories abound… such as this one in Salon. Senate Democrats have rushed to claim that this conservative Republican…
W.J. Astore I read the news today, oh boy. President Obama has decided to keep thousands of U.S. troops in Afghanistan until 2017, effectively kicking the war to the next president. According to the New York Times, “The Obama administration sees the choice to slow down the United States’ Afghan exit as the best of…
Chris Hedges. Courtesy of Truthdig. Introduction: The rise of Jeremy Corbyn to lead Britain’s Labour Party is heartening. Here’s a man with a heartfelt contrary perspective. Sadly, he has no American equivalent among the major parties’ candidates. Bernie Sanders comes closest, but Sanders supports drone strikes and refuses to take a stand against Israeli aggression.…
W.J. Astore When I was a teenager, America’s two biggest allies in the Middle East were Israel and Iran. We considered the Shah of Iran to be a strong ally in the region, and sold him some of our most advanced weaponry, including the F-14 Tomcat fighter with its powerful radar as well as HAWK…
b. traven Alice may have survived her trip down the rabbit hole to Wonderland, but it is an unseemly place for the president of a powerful but feckless nation to venture. Nor is it likely that Obama will emerge unscathed – or further enlightened. How so? President Obama seems to have cut a deal with…
Nile Stanton At the reliably up-to-date and highly informative website Breaking Defense, Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. reported that on June 16th, Lt Gen James Kowalski, Deputy Commander of the US Strategic Command, told a group, “We have to recognize that there are two authoritarian nuclear-armed regimes [China and Russia] dominating the Eurasian landmass, and they…
b. traven, W.J. Astore, and Stuart Lyle We at The Contrary Perspective believe in freewheeling debate. We recently had such a debate, largely behind the scenes, on the causes and larger meaning of America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. We offer this debate to our readers, unedited except for the addition of links and clarifications,…
Michael Murry. Introduction by William Astore. It’s fascinating to witness Republican candidates for president continuing to swing and miss as they’re tossed softball questions about George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. Jeb Bush was first at bat. He initially said he’d invade Iraq all over again; then he got testy about answering “hypothetical”…
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